Beneficiaries are actors too.pdf - Southern Institute of Peace ...

Africa's experience with the industrialisation process. (1)
Agriculture and IK, which were the mainstay of Africa's economy,
were given less importance by the two-sector economic model as a
viable means of achieving Africa's industrialisation as well as
sustainable development. It was suggested that the rural
economy should perform a secondary role as an outlet for capital
products (producing food for consumption and to facilitate
production for export currency earning) and be a supplier of
manpower. (2) By emphasising the perpetuation of capitalist
infusion as a major means of Africa's development, Lewis' model
contributed to insufficient agricultural investment, which
resulted in the rising of food imports and the failure of export
earnings to grow fast enough to provide the needed industrial
inputs. (3) In the African countries that tried Lewis' model,
industrialisation was very disappointing both in its inability to
absorb the large numbers of workers it had attracted to urban
areas and in its limited contribution to development outside the
principal urban areas. (4) Finally, Lewis' model of development
mainly concentrated on output and failed to take into account
income distribution, welfare, and human satisfaction.
Deng (1988) has argued that Lewis' development model
desperately failed in Africa because it “sought to apply
development models that were incompatible with African
economic structure, social values, and institutions” [Deng,
1988:32].
Import Substitution (Prebisch-Singer Thesis)
Prebisch and Singer developed the Import Substitution
Industrialisation (ISI) strategy. African countries that
experimented with the ISI strategy, which was very predominant
in the 1960s, were convinced that because of secular decline in
the value of their export of agricultural products to their imports
of manufactured products, their terms of trade were declining.
(That is, export prices declined relative to import prices.)
Nkrumah opted for the ISI Strategy. Other African countries
followed Ghana's lead in the 1960's. Mali and Kenya looked at
industrialisation in terms of cost savings from local production in
place of high cost imports from abroad. Similarly, other African
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